Undies and Arthur Marshall

The All-Rounder: a memoir of Fremantle sportsman Arthur Marshall by Roger Underwood The champion sportsman who excels in several sporting disciplines is a well-known phenomenon. Don Bradman, for example, was also the South Australian squash champion and a scratch golfer; Test fast bowler Ray Lindwall also played first grade rugby league in NSW and was a top sprinter. Western Australians who were multi-disciplinary champions include Keith Slater, who played Test cricket and football, cricket and baseball for WA, Derek Chadwick who played football and cricket with distinction for WA, and Rick Charlesworth, an Olympic hockey player and also a State cricketer. Fremantle all-rounders of note include John Baguley, who was an Olympic long and triple-jumper, played rugby for WA and league football for East Fremantle, and Merv Cowan who was captain of the Fremantle A Grade cricket team and the East Fremantle League football team, a State water polo player and State breaststroke swimming champion. The phenomenon is easily understood. Champion sportsmen share key physical and mental attributes: they are naturally athletic, they have exceptional hand-eye coordination and lightning reflexes, are highly competitive, and they have that special inner strength known as “the will to win”. This is best demonstrated in the champion who ‘wins ugly’ – sporting lingo for the ability to dig deep and find a way to win even when injured or having an off-day. The champion who performs at the elite level in several disciplines is rarer today than in earlier eras. Modern sporting champions tend to specialise. They choose to become a full-time AFL footballer, a Test cricketer, or a swimmer or golfer, and they do this while still a teenager. They then devote their lives to their chosen sport. This is a consequence of the fact that sport has become business; to get to the top in one sport it is necessary to renounce all others (except perhaps for recreation). This is a story about Arthur Marshall, another notable all-rounder in the era when multi-disciplinary sporting goals could be pursued: Arthur was a Fremantle boy who became an elite sportsman in four different disciplines. Despite the fact that he is today still a well-known figure in south-of-the-river districts – practically every club tennis player in the region was taught by him or by one of his coaching staff – and he has also been prominent in the media and politics, his story is not well-known. Few people realise just what a dominant all-round sportsman Marshall was in WA in the 1950s. As a schoolboy at Wesley College, he excelled at tennis, football and cricket. Later, he became a champion tennis player (playing twice at Wimbledon). He was four-times the State junior table tennis champion and once runner-up in the State Mens Championship, and he played A Grade Table Tennis (for the Fremantle Police Boys Club) in the WA Table Tennis pennants competition. He played league football for East Fremantle during their glory years, and A Grade pennant squash. In his younger days he was a 10-handicap golfer and he is today a skilful lawn bowler. He owned and raced thoroughbred horses. He was also a coach, a sporting administrator and promoter, a sporting journalist, a businessman and TV and radio commentator. Arthur Marshall’s history is also interesting because he was a member of the generation of sportsmen who became enmeshed in (and were victimised by) one of the blackest episodes in Australian sport: the clash between professional sportsmen and amateur sporting administrations. The problem was that in those days, officialdom had the power to dictate where and when a player could play and how he could earn his living. The player had no say in it. In no other sport was this clash more diabolical in its impact on sportsmen than in tennis, although it was probably most laughable in English cricket. Here 1 the amateurs (referred to as “Gentlemen”) and the professionals (known simply as “players”) were not permitted even to use the same change room or enter the field by the same gate. More of this in a minute. First, it is necessary to sketch in the Marshall background. Arthur Dix Marshall1 was born in 1934, into a sporting family. His father Horrie Marshall was a champion cyclist, ranked with the best in Australia and winner of multiple road and track State titles. Horrie won the 1929 Warrnambool-Melbourne race, at that time the Melbourne Cup of cycling, beating the international champion Herbert Opperman in the sprint home. Arthur’s mother Eunice was a club champion lawn bowler at the East Fremantle Bowling Club. But it was his maternal grandfather Arthur “Cogwheel” Dix who had the greatest influence on Arthur. Dix was a miner who had grown up in Bendigo and then moved to the newly discovered goldfields in Boulder in WA. He was one of the top footballers in the goldfields, and in 1913 he was made an offer he could not refuse: move to Fremantle, play for East Fremantle football club (for two shillings and sixpence a game) plus a job on the wharf. Dix ended up playing in three premierships with Old Easts. Later he became Arthur’s greatest sporting mentor. The Marshall family lived in Carrington Street, Palmyra, and Arthur attended Palmyra State School, where he was bright enough to skip a year. He was scheduled to commence high school at Wesley College, but was a year too young, so he did his first year of high school at Fremantle Boys. Here he came under the influence of another important mentor: his teacher was Jerry Dolan, the legendary football player and coach, and stern disciplinarian.2 It was at Fremantle Boys that Arthur’s precocious sporting ability was first noticed: he played in the School First XVIII football team while only 12, most of his team-mates and opponents being 15 or 16. He had already by then taught himself to play tennis, initially at Port’s Courts in Palmyra (later to become known as the Palmyra Tennis Club) which was only a block from home, and where he would hit around with friends after school. Harry Port, who owned the courts, took an interest in Arthur, and would allow him to practice his serve in exchange for Arthur going over the grass courts pulling the heavy roller, once a week.3 When he entered Wesley College in 1947 he began to receive his first formal coaching (from Herbert Edwards at school and then later from Max Bonner when he became a member of the State squad). Both his passion for tennis and his tennis skills blossomed. He was soon winning tournaments, was the captain of the winning team in the inter-school Slazenger Cup competition, and when still only 15 won the men’s singles championship at the Palmyra Tennis Club. He was successively the State Junior Champion in the Under 16, Under 17, Under 19 and Under 21 categories. He was selected to represent WA in the Linton Cup Interstate (under-19) carnival three times, and in 1950 and 1951 was invited to go to Melbourne and train with a national junior squad under the legendary Davis Cup captain Harry Hopman. Had it been 2013, rather than 1953, Arthur would have moved straight into professional tennis after leaving school, or been offered a scholarship to an American college or to the Australian Academy of Sport. None of those options was available in those days. University was also not an option: he had just missed out on securing a Leaving Certificate, passing well in maths and science but failing the compulsory subject of English. Typically he had elected to play in the South Australian Table Tennis championships in Adelaide in the week leading up to the English exam. Needing a job he turned to his father’s mate Les Baldwin, the owner of Swansea Cycles, one of Fremantle’s most important manufacturing and retail businesses. Arthur already knew the place well and they knew him. He had worked there on Saturday mornings for many years as a delivery boy (he rode a bike with a trailer on 1 Arthur’s mother, before her marriage to Horrie, was Eunice Dix. The name carries through into the next generation with Arthur’s daughter Dixie Marshall. 2 Dolan later became a Member of Parliament and Minister for Police. 3 Port also encouraged Arthur’s competitiveness. He would place a threepenny bit in a selected spot in the service box. Arthur could keep it if he could hit it with his serve. Threepence was not to be sneezed at in the early 1940s. 2 the back and would ferry eight brand new bicycles at a time down to the railway station) and fixing punctures. He was offered a job - as a clerk and a salesman – but allowed sufficient time to play A Grade tennis in the summer (for Hensman Park) and league football in the winter (for East Fremantle). He even played one game of first grade cricket for Fremantle and would have played cricket seriously had not his love of tennis been stronger. A highlight for Arthur in his first year after school was being selected to play an exhibition doubles match as the curtain-raiser for the 1953 Davis Cup match between Belgium and India. Playing on centre court at Kings Park before a large audience, Marshall and Hamilton defeated the favourites Wilderspin and Blacklock. In some ways this result foreshadowed things to come. Arthur was a fine singles player, but an even better doubles player, with his swinging lefty serve, artistic returns (he played on the deuce side, unusual for a lefty), destructive overhead and deft touch volleys.

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